


Save the Mantikittens

by ladivvinatravestia



Series: Flash Fic [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Families, Gen, canon-typical poor decision making, no beta we die like men, rare subspecies of manticore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 07:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20944403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: Steve and his adventuring party have a random encounter with manticores.





	Save the Mantikittens

**Author's Note:**

> For whumptober prompt "dragged away" and spooktober prompts "magic" and "magical creatures".
> 
> If I've done this correctly, you shouldn't need to know anything specific about Dungeons & Dragons to read this, just treat it like any other generic high fantasy hack & slash setting. No, not like that kind of slash, I'm sorry but I didn't manage to work any romance into this ficlet.
> 
> Additional warning: the party kills some manticores, inadvertently leaving the infant manticores orphaned. They then debate whether to kill the infant manticores as well, due to the manticores' "Evil" nature.

One moment Wanda is hurling scorching rays of fire at the attacking manticores and the next, the entire party is engulfed by a giant fireball. She cringes.

"I'm sorry!" she exclaims.

Steve attempts to dodge away from the flame but he can't quite make it out of range. Everything goes dark.

When Steve comes to, one of the manticores has him by the left foot and is dragging him along the ground. He lost his shield when he dropped unconscious and now it's somewhere behind him, presumably in the middle of the fireball that continues to rage. He turns his attention to freeing himself from the manticore.

Arrows fly towards the manticore from several directions and Steve realizes Clint, Natasha, and Sam must still be up. The manticore responds by roaring and taking to the air, hurling a tail spike at one of Steve's teammates. Steve is left dangling upside down in midair as the manticore takes flight. Everything he'd so carefully organized into his pack this morning tumbles toward the ground. Steve sighs and lets himself turn into a deadweight. He can always fight the manticore bare-handed when it gets to wherever it's taking him.

Adventuring always sounds so glamorous and heroic when other people do it. Steve's party can barely make it through a single day without getting almost killed by swarms of rats, or invited never to return to a particular tavern or a particular town.

Sam, Clint, and Natasha continue their pursuit, harried by the tail spikes thrown by the manticore carrying Steve and its compatriots. By twisting and turning in the manticore's grip, Steve can see that Bucky and Wanda have also been captured, and are out cold. Then he sees Natasha go down. Sam and Clint stop to help her. The manticores are flying Steve, Bucky, and Wanda deeper into the forest and Steve fears the party is going to wind up being just one more set of adventurers who never make it back to civilization.

Eventually, Steve is dropped unceremoniously into a large, smelly nest. He can hear childlike voices crying something that sounds like,

"Mom! Moo-oommm!!"

"You stay here," the manticore growls, pushing Steve to the floor of the nest with a large, clawed front paw. "You make good food for my babies."

Steve suspects that's not so much an order as it is an evaluation of his nutritional value for growing mantikittens.

The manticore takes off from its nest again, hissing. Steve hopes Sam, Clint, and Natasha can make it. Meanwhile, Bucky's eyes are fluttering open and Wanda is still lifeless, so Steve crawls over to them, staying close to the floor of the nest, and lays his hands on them. His healing powers are pretty limited, but they just have to survive long enough to escape the nest.

Bucky and Wanda sit groggily up and survey their surroundings. Like Steve, Bucky has lost most of his kit, but Wanda produces a handful of goodberries from somewhere and hands them around. Their healing power is even more limited than what Steve has to draw on, but at least none of them will be hungry for the next 24 hours. The mantikittens continue to cry,

"Mooo-oommmmmm!!!"

The sun gets lower in the sky. Bucky gets to his knees and begins moving quietly around the nest, looking for where the mantikittens are hidden. At the opposite side of the nest from where they'd been dropped, he begins brushing branches away to uncover a dirty piece of cloth that might once have been some unfortunate adventurer's cloak. He lifts a corner carefully and is met with enraged hissing noises, and one little voice who says angrily,

"_Not_ mom!"

Bucky's hand strays to his belt, but even his knife has been dropped somewhere in the fray. He drops the cloth back over the mantikittens and rejoins Steve and Wanda.

"Options?" he says.

Wanda and Steve are talking through the spells they could still cast when a grappling hook tumbles into the nest and sticks firmly into the wall. Steve scrambles to his feet to see who it is, heedless of Bucky's hissed warnings to be careful. He's rewarded, though, by the sight of Natasha hoisting herself up on a rope toward the nest, with Sam and Clint spotting her from below.

"We got them all," Natasha reports when she reaches the nest.

"Momm! Moo-ooommmmm!!!" cry the mantikittens. Natasha sits up, alert once more.

"What's that?" she asks.

"Mantikittens," says Bucky, a look of distaste on his face.

Natasha scrambles to her feet. "And you haven't killed them yet?" she demands. "Where are they?" She draws her knife.

"No weapons left," shrugs Bucky, but he leads her over to where the mantikittens are hidden under their blanket and she hands him another knife. She tears the blanket off and stands appraisingly in front of them.

"_Not_ mom! NOT mom!" they start to wail. They have stubby little wings, pudgy bodies, and downy manes surround their almost-human faces and Steve suddenly understands that Bucky and Natasha mean to kill them.

"Now wait just a damn minute here," says Steve, standing up and striding over to the proposed scene of slaughter.

"What's going on here?" asks Sam, who has just made his way up the rope to join them in the nest.

"Bucky and Nat are going to kill the mantikittens," says Steve.

"They _are_ Evil," says Sam. "They might not be that dangerous now, but when they grow up they'll be attacking innocent travellers, just like their parents did to us."

"Look, I know the accepted wisdom is that beasts and monstrosities are born Good, Neutral, or Evil and they don't change their alignments, but what if that's wrong?" says Steve. "Manticores can speak, so if people can choose and change our alignments, why can't manticores? Just because some cleric assigned them an alignment who knows how many thousands of years ago? If they're raised by the right people, they could grow up to be Good."

"Mooommm! Mo-oo-oommm!!" the mantikittens wail.

Wanda rushes to their side. "Hush now," she tries to soothe them.

Sam looks thoughtful. Bucky looks relieved to be putting his knife away, and Natasha adjusts her grip on her knife, considering. There's a moment of tense silence, which even the mantikittens seem to know not to break. Then Clint comes tumbling over the side of the nest.

"Aw, hey, mantikittens," he says. "Cute little things, aren't you?"

"Clint," says Natasha through clenched teeth, but Clint's not paying attention to her. He comes right up to where the mantikittens are huddled, crouching down next to them and extending one gauntleted hand.

The mantikitten nearest him reaches out with its little paw, claws extended, and bats at Clint's hand, hard.

"Ow! Hey!" says Clint, drawing his hand back and licking the blood off of it. "That wasn't very nice. But you didn't mean to hurt me, did you, little one?"

"Clint," tries Natasha again.

The mantikitten who clawed Clint says, hesitantly, "Dad?"

As soon as the word is out, the other mantikittens join in.

"Dad! Daaa-aadddd!!" they clamour.

The first one pushes Clint over onto his back and licks his face, and soon Clint is buried under a pile of wriggling, excited mantikittens.

Sam, Bucky, and Natasha look at each other. If Steve had to put the look into words, it would probably say,

"Not this shit again."

Natasha sighs and sheathes her knife.

"Okay, look," she says. "We can probably stay here tonight and get a good long rest, and then we'll move on in the morning when everyone is recovered. But I am _not_ sharing my rations with the mantikittens."

And she sits down as far from them as possible before pulling out her field rations.

"What do mantikittens eat, anyway?" Clint asks, scratching one behind the ear. It closes its eyes and makes a pleased rumbling sound.

"They eat people, Clint," says Bucky. He takes his place next to Natasha and pulls out his own pack, which Sam, Clint, and Natasha had salvaged and brought along with them.

"Nuts," says Clint. "Do you think they'll eat goodberries instead?"

**Author's Note:**

> For the truly curious, Steve is a Paladin with an Oath of Devotion to Tyr. Wanda is a Wild Magic Sorceror. Natasha is a Rogue, Bucky is a Fighter, Clint is a Ranger, and Sam is multiclassed in Ranger and Fighter. Manticores have an INT of 7 and a WIS of 12, which is considerably better than the stats of some of the party members in my regular Friday night game.
> 
> Visit me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ladivvinatravestia), where my asks box is always open to prompts.


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